"I Have Sinned"

​Midweek 3 – 2024                                                            LSB #’s 437, 453, 430:1, 3; 883:1-2, 5-6
Text – Psalm 41:4
 
As for me, I said, ‘O Lord, be gracious to me; heal me, for I have sinned against You.’ 
 
I HAVE SINNED
 
 
In these midweek sermons, two things are being emphasized: that the Psalms speak about Jesus & that because the Psalms speak about Jesus, they speak also about you.   At Baptism, you were “joined to the Lord.”   You & Jesus became one, just as “He & His Father are one.”  (John 10:30)     “What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate.”  (Matthew 19:6) 
Your permanent & eternal connection to Christ is an essential tool for reading the Psalms.  If it’s true that the Psalms speak about Jesus, then sometimes they say strange, unbecoming   & seemingly untrue things about Him.  Psalm 41 is an example, especially where it is written, “O Lord, be gracious to me; heal me, for I have sinned against You.”  
Those words speak strangely about Jesus because Jesus did not sin against the Lord His Father.  Jesus is sinless.  The Book of Hebrews famously & beautifully states that Jesus, our High Priest, was indeed tempted in every way, just as we are, “yet without sin.”  (4:15) 
Some people come to the disastrous conclusion that those words – “yet without sin” – indicate that Jesus was not actually like us in every single way.   However, St. Luke tells us, “[Jesus] went down with them & came to Nazareth & was submissive to [His parents].”  (2:51) 
Jesus also experienced the full range of human emotion, weeping at the grave of Lazarus (John 11:35), getting angry at the moneychangers in the temple (John 2:15), & being ‘sorrowful, even to death’ while in the Garden of Gethsemane.  (Matthew 26:38)    According to this sorrowful account, He experienced the full range of physical pain:
“Pilate took Jesus & flogged Him...  He delivered Him over to them to be crucified.”  (John 19:1, 16)   But human thinking can still say, wait a minute, Jesus “in every respect has been tempted as we are” (Hebrews 4:15), except for the fact that He had no sin.  Surely that must have been some sort of advantage for Him!    O, how our sinful flesh can be deceived & misled.  Jesus of Nazareth, incarnate by the Holy Spirit of the Virgin Mary, truly made Himself exactly like us in every way, including sin. 
Yes, our Lord Jesus Christ truly had, & still has, absolutely no sin of His own.  St. Peter wrote, “He committed no sin, neither was deceit found in His mouth.”  (1 Peter 2:22)     However, just because Jesus committed no sin, that does not mean He had no sin.  Where the Bible says in the Book of Hebrews, “yet without sin” (4:15), it means, “yet without sin   of His own.”  
When John wrote, “In Him there is no sin” (1 John 3:5), he did not mean that there was no sin on Him.  John the Baptist was faithful & true when He said concerning Jesus, “Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away” – who picks up, shoulders upon Himself, & carries off – “the sin of the world!”  (John 1:29)    Where did the sin come from, which was given to Jesus?  
It came from you & from me.  “The Lord has laid on Him,” said Isaiah, “the iniquity of us all.”  (53:6)   As you heard in last week’s sermon, “Jesus held Himself personally responsible for our guilt; He made Himself to be the guilty one so that we could be “blameless & innocent, children of God without blemish.”  (Philippians 2:15)  
That is why the Scriptures say God, “made Him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God.”  (2 Corinthians 5:21)   Five hundred years ago, Martin Luther preached a similar thing:
When the merciful Father saw that we were being oppressed through the Law, that we were being held under a curse, that we could not be liberated from it by anything, He sent His Son into the world, heaped all the sins of men upon Him, & said to Him: Be Peter the denier; Paul the persecutor, blasphemer, & assaulter; David the adulterer; the sinner who ate the apple in Paradise; the thief on the cross.  In short, be the person of all men, the one who has committed the sins of all men.  And see to it that You pay & make satisfaction for them.  (“Lectures on Galatians [3:13],” AE 26:280)   Our Lord’s personal carrying of all our guilt is the reason why the sinless Jesus could say in Psalm 41, “I have sinned.” 
David prayed in Psalm 41, “As for me, I said, ‘O Lord, be gracious to me; heal me, for I have sinned against You.’”  (41:4)   The Lord heard his prayer & laid all of David’s sin upon His Son, His Christ, His “Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!”  (John 1:29)   You can pray the same prayer that David prayed, & every word of that prayer will be true:
“O Lord, be gracious to me; heal me, for I have sinned against You.”  As the Lord did for David, He has done for you: the Lord has heard your prayer & listened to your plea for grace.  God the heavenly Father has laid all your sin upon His Son, right next to David’s sin.   It would not be wrong for you to think of your Lord Jesus as saying to you at your Baptism:
“From now on, I am going to be you, & you are going to be Me.  Switch with Me so that you may take My place while I have yours.”  Because the Psalms are about Jesus, Psalm 41 also gives voice to the prayer of our Lord: “O Lord, be gracious to Me; heal Me, for I have sinned against You.”  
Because of the load that our Lord shouldered for our salvation, the divine Law could look at Jesus, “Jesus only” (Matthew 17:8), & say concerning Him, in the words of Martin Luther:
“I find Him a sinner, who takes upon Himself the sins of all men.  I do not see any other sins than those in Him.  Therefore let Him die on the cross!  And so it attacks Him & kills Him.  By this deed the whole world is purged & expiated from all sins, & thus it is set free from death & from every evil.”  (AE 26:280) 
In Psalm 41, Jesus appealed to His Father for your sake, carrying your burden & being
your sin.  (2 Corinthians 5:21)   His Father heard Him because of the reverence with which He
submitted His plea (Hebrews 5:7), & because of His obedience unto death, even death on a cross.  
“Therefore God has highly exalted Him & bestowed on Him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven & on earth & under the earth, & every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.”  (Philippians 2:9–11)  Amen. 
 
 
Who is it, Lord, that bruised You?  Who has so sore abused You & caused You all your woe?  We all must make confession of sin & dire transgression while You no ways of evil know.        Your cross I place before me; its saving power restore me, sustain me in the test.   It will when life is ending, be guiding & attending my way to Your eternal rest.  Amen.  LSB 453:3, 7.